Ah, yes, almost forgot to mention (con report still forthcoming...): at Anime Iowa 2006, on Sunday morning, just outside the dealer's room, I made a formal proposal of marriage to Danielle, ring and all, and she said yes. ^_^

(That FORMALIZES the relationship. It's been pretty much an understood thing between us for quite a while now.)

Con report sooner or later. For now...Praise Hojo!

Wootini! Danielle just called to let us know that she made it to Des Moines okay and is set up in her hotel room. Definitely good to know she made it there okay. (Yes, we're a worry-wart.) ^_^

Danielle hasn't been gone 10 minutes yet -- she's probably not even beyond the 61 Drive In Theater yet -- and I already miss her. A lot.

It didn't occur to me until just a short time ago that this will be the first time since I moved up here that she and I have really been apart for any significant length of time. I guess this is a sort of test to see if I can stand alone in Maquoketa or if the only way I fit in here is by being with her.

It was kind of funny, though, that when we stopped at the truck stop for last-minute supplies before sending her on her way, the morning clerk looked surprised to see me. She said she was shocked to see me when the sun was out and that she thought I rose at night to feast upon the blood of the drunken. Heh.

Kamen Rider --Kabuto in specific-- is going to be the death of me, or, at least, my meager bank account. I've had a love of the Kamen Rider franchise ever since my old friend Hector nudged me into Super Sentai. (It's not a huge leap from one genre of Tokusatsu programming to the other; it's almost an assumed upgrade or natural transition.) I was first intrigued by Ryuuki (specifically by Kamen Rider Knight) and later found what I could access of Blade and FAIZ to be interesting. Hibiki never caught my attention much because I didn't care for the annual theme or character designs. This year's incarnation, though...Kabuto hits all the right notes.

First, it's a return to the snazzy insectoid designs of the past, moreso than any of the previous series that I'd been interested in. Second, the henshin devices are varied, Rider-specific, and very nifty looking. Third: dual modes, most particularly armored modes. I'm a sucker for armor and an even bigger one for armor that can be discarded in the midst of battle to allow for greater mobility. So...yay for Masked and Rider Forms in this series.

But what's going to break me are the henshin devices.

It seems like everyone in my group going to AI are either definitely going to cosplay something or have serious thoughts (and ready outfits) to do so. I was originally going to have an Enigma (read: Organization XIII) coat like Dani to wear at the con, but the costly and untimely upgrade from Sakura to Urd negated that plan, but even so...I WANNA COSPLAY SOMETHING. At first my imagination ran away without me and started me thinking of cosplaying Zoano-Colonel.EXE from Rockman.EXE Beast. Too complex, not enough time or funding. Scale it back: regular Colonel.EXE from Stream/Beast. Still too much with too little time.

Several idea revisions later I realize that I have the means to a very simple cosplay already at hand: I could play an non-transformed Kamen Rider. Heck, I've already got the Kaixa Driver from FAIZ (9-1-3 standing by...). However, while I love the darker voice chipping of the Kaixa Driver, the cellphone and belt henshin device is rather bland for my tastes, at least for "cosplaying" at AI.

Thanks to a weird dream I had last night, I did a seemingly random Wiki search on KR Kabuto to see where the show had gone since I stopped torrenting episodes. As expected, more Riders had been added since just Kabuto: Zabii, Drake, Sasordo, and Gataku (Wasp, Dragonfly, Scorpion, and Stag Beetle, respectively, are their motifs.) Of course Sasordo appealed to me: Scorpion theme plus a sword henshin device. Very cool in action. I was enamored of Kabuto's belt device from the first preview I saw. Zabii's bracer also struck me as simple yet cool. Drake's gun henshin device was very cleverly wrought. Heck, I liked all of their henshin zecters.

There's the problem: the zecters are flashy enough for my tastes and would be cool to cosplay at AI and ALSO just be very nice additions to my trove of henshin hero gear in general. Kabuto, Zabii, or Gataku's zecters would be easiest for me to wear at the con, being belts or bracers. Drake and Sasordo would require me to carry the weapon in hand all the time.

In short: I want all the zecters, but REALLY should be saving my money for the con proper. I already splurged once when I probably shouldn't have to buy some books I'd wanted. Now I have to ponder splurging again (for, at most, two zecters and that'd be stretching it pretty thin) and being able to carry out my nefariously simple plans of "cosplay".

Oye...me and my silly moral delimmas.

They killed Mage (the Ascension.) Not only that, but the body was so horribly mangled that dental records were required to make a positive identification of the remains.

Now, the rest of this post entails some esoteric ranting about White Wolf's Storyteller gaming system, the "old" World of Darkness game world, and my impressions about the system/world reboot for Mage: the Awakening as I've gleaned plot and mechanics information from a plethora of websites, including at least two Wikis (granted not as good as firsthand information gained from actually reading the book myself, but I'll decline spending the $30-some-odd it'd take for that this time.)

So, with that caveat, the rest of the ramble is under the cuts, divided by subsectional headings.
WARNING: THESIS IN THE MAKING THAT PROBABLY SHOULD NEVER HAVE SEEN THE LIGHT OF DAY AHEAD. RUN WHILE YOU STILL CAN.

( Introduction )

( Background Information )

( The Part Wherein I Complain, Cry Myself To Sleep, And Am Arrested By The Grammar Gestapo )

( Brief Thoughts On Vampire: the Requiem )

Much as I hate to have to do it, Sakura-chan has become so unstable with random reboot cycles and periods of downtime before she can be used again that I've begun shopping for Sakura-chan's successor. While the original plan was to call her successor Peorth, I've decided to change that idea to Urd, since getting a new computer now is a touch of heaven (upgrade! Maybe I can finally run Empire At War without it crashing during the opening cutscene) and a touch of hell (I really wanted to save more money for Anime Iowa and save up to buy an Enigma Custom coat to wear at the 'con.)

Right now I've got something lined up through Dell that would run me ~350 or so for a moderately powerful system. Nothing high-end, gods-smiting, run-every-game-known-to-man-or-beast, or anything like that, but enough to deal with the few PC games I want to play right now, do the online stuff I'm accustomed to, and, most importantly, be stable and reliable, not rebooting randomly or any of the other problems that have been plaguing Sakura increasingly frequently of late. It's definitely not the greatest PC, and it's not what I would have asked for in my next PC, but it's what I can afford at the moment and what will meet my computing needs.

Aside from Dell, can anyone out there recommend to me a solid, reputable place where I could get a new system built more or less to what specifications I desire? Unfortunately, pulling off another custom job like Ruri was wherein I assembled her parts piecemeal and built the system with my own two pseudopods isn't an option this time around, so I'm going to have to let someone else do it for me.

Well, while most of my friends, acquaintances, associates, and other miscellaneous people-I-know seem to have been out watching the latest X-Men movie, Dani and I decided to forego The Last Stand and instead check out Over the Hedge.

(Somewhat amusingly, Dani's mother also watched Over the Hedge, but her observations and opinions differed wildly. Big surprise there.)

We really enjoyed it. The voices were well-done and well-mated to the on-screen characters, there were nods to the source comic here and there, and a number of references that probably went way over the heads of the kiddos in the audience (q.v., A Streetcar Named Desire, Citizen Kane, usw). Fun stuff, all in all. Had some really nice criticisms of modern life in suburbia, though nothing so out there that it detracted from the humor of the story.

All in all, probably worth watching for all my like-minded compatriots out there. Not quite as over-the-top as, say, Shrek, but still very enjoyable and good for some laughs.

The Sevens meme

tagged by guiltyred, lovingly torn from the pages of nekosandy, and implicitly stolen from yasuyoshi:

seven of seven

Seven things I want to do before I die:
Publish a trilogy of novels (see! I'm not a copy cat!)
Have a sword custom-forged to my specifications
Finally and fully lay to rest my stepfather's legacy
Design my own game (board, ccg, video, or otherwise not really important)
Visit Japan
Own my own gaming shop
Marry Danielle

Seven things I cannot do:
Bear the willfully ignorant
Understand zealotry of any sort
Play racing games very well
Program
Be neat and tidy
Give up without a fight
Draw

Seven things that attract me to a boy/girl
Personality
Sense of humor
Accessories
Intelligence
Wit
Dog Person vs Cat Person
Hair

Seven things that I say most often:
"Nerts..."
"Monkey!"
"Lord Goddess..."
"Hai?"
"Chi-sa-na hi-to!"
"Rocks fall, everybody dies."
"Oh, Gods..."

Seven books I love to read:
The Black Jewels series by Anne Bishop
Neuromancer by William Gibson
The Belgariad/The Malloreon by David Eddings
The Elenium/The Tamuli by David Eddings
Dragonlance Chronicles/Legends by Maraget Weiss & Tracy Hickman
The Gunslinger by Stephen King
The Dark Elf Trilogy by R.A. Salvadore

Seven movies I could watch over and over again:
Dark City
Transformers: the Movie
The Last Starfighter
Kill Bill
Hurricanger vs Gaoranger
Shrek/Shrek 2
The Empire Strikes Back

Seven people I want to do this too: Anyone who feels like it and hasn't done it yet (um...small friends list, ne?)

People really are strange. As a merchant of small items, I ring up totals ranging from a few cents (the least being around 18 cents for a sucker) to several hundred dollars (usually diesel sales for truck drivers.) That said, every so often, maybe once every few weeks, item collection and taxation conspire to make the buyer's total come out to be thirty-four cents shy of seven dollars.

That's right: $6.66.

(Slightly less often, I owe people that same amount in change.)

What strikes me as funny, though, is that almost without exception, people will go out of their way to alter this total, buying something else unintended on the spot or changing what bill and/or coins they gave me to alter their change coming back. People absolutely freak out when they get that as their total and it strikes me as really odd.

Yeah, yeah, I know: number of the Beast and all that, but bad Henry McCoy jokes aside, are people REALLY so superstitious that they'll go out of their way to avoid the number, even if they're not terribly religious on the whole for most of their lives? Apparently so.

Being odd as I am, this really makes me wonder: why are people like this? Why is it drilled so hard into their psyches and subconsciouses that this number must be avoided in all forms, lest doom fall upon them? Maybe this is just one of those few sections of the Bible that people are dimly familiar with, so they parrot it out every chance they get so as to appear to all others as good, God-fearing Christians.

Oh, well. Whatever it is, the additional sales this phenomenon incurs just adds to my drawer total for the night and increases my job security, which is fine by me. At least this particular form of superstitious nonsense doesn't actively inconvenience me, though I do get tired of feigning wholehearted agreeance with the person that the total has to change RIGHT THE HELL THEN.

*peeks out of his hole*

Anou sa...Angie-san? I know I was told to email you recently, but didn't get around to it until today 'cause I was sick (and Dani was getting ready to bop me mercilessly and repeatedly for waiting so long) but for some reason I can't seem to find an email addy for you on file and my DNS can't seem to find dubird.net today so I could find one there, so if you could tell me somewhere to get in touch with you, I'd be ever so appreciative. ^_^;;

*dives back into his hole before anyone realizes he's not dead yet*

I swear to freaking gods, this "extended holiday" thing of giving a day off on Monday when a holiday falls on Sunday is frellin' BULLSHIT. USPS, get off your asses and actually DO YOUR JOB.

First and foremost, a belated but very grateful thank you goes out to Angie for the unexpected and very nifty gift of anime last week. It was a muchly-needed bright spot amidst some new year-ish spootiness. Arigatou yo! ^_^

As for the afore-mentioned spootiness, I think my manager at work is trying to kill me. Friday the 30th I worked my scheduled 10p-6a shift. Saturday she "needed someone more experienced" so she had me work second shift (2p-10p), meaning I had 8 hours from the time I was supposed to get off work until I was supposed to be back at work for a second round. Go figure that'd be the time I'd have a relapse of insomnia and get ZERO hours of sleep instead.

Somehow, I survived that shift with minimal incident. (One guy came in: he'd hit a deer and his van was pretty smashed up. He was pretty shaky as I helped him call the police, get in touch with his company, usw.) However, I wasn't done yet! Mary wanted me to come back on New Year's Day...for first shift. I have NEVER worked first shift before. But, once again, that gave me a measly 8 hours between shift end and back again.

My shift was freaking DEAD...except for sudden intense bursts of activity. I think I only had maybe $400 POS business for the entire 8 hour shift. I was pretty out of things when Darren came in to relieve me at 2. When I got home and unwound, I slept for something on the order of 15 hours, straight. Did not hear Dani fumble for the alarm clock (even though it went into the second set of beeps), did not hear her get out of bed and go downstairs, nothing.

Other than work, there was one other thing going on during that same time period. Some of you who read Dani's journal know that we now have a second kitty around the house, though Brook is still adjusting to her presence. Dani found this really loving stray cat outside the hotel last Thursday morning. Unlike the other strays, this one didn't run away from Dani when she tried to give it a saucer of milk. Very affectionary critter. Eventually Dani corralled it in the car and gave me a call to bring over the kitty carrier. The cat took to me very well, perhaps even better than she did with Dani. We took her to the vet on Friday morning to make sure she was in good health, get her shots, usw. She was in great health and handled being poked, prodded, and having blood drawn by the vet very well. Paying for her vet bill was an excellent use of my Christmas holiday/overtime pay.

While at the vet we had to, of course, give the cat her name for the records. Dani left it up to me, since I was the one paying for her vet bill. So...I decided on calling her Sinister (often just Sin for short.) She is most definitely NOT a sinister little critter, but with some of the fuss Brook and Dani's mom were making over the thing, you'd swear she was. It's also a partial reference to one Nathaniel Essex, but it's still a good name for her.

(Of course, it's really funny to me that Dani's mother, heavily superstitious as she is, hates the name for the cat and won't call her by it. I even found a note downstairs asking something about the cat, who was simply referred to as "the gray kitty". Makes me laugh.)

Lastly, using some of my Christmas/birthday money from Mom, I picked up a Nintendo DS and Metroid Zero Mission. I should be getting Rockman.EXE 5: Twin Leader in the mail soon, too. I also bought myself a newer MP3 player with 1gb of storage on it. Also currently on the now playing list are X-Men Legends, X-Men Legends II, Megaman X Command Mission, and, soon, Megaman X7 and God of War (finally!). I'm also highly anticipating the arrival of my Kaixa Driver Belt in the mail. The only thing better would have been the ultimate DX version of the Faiz Driver, but that's two arms and three legs' worth of expensive. I need those to pay for an auction for a pan cel of Peorth and Gorgeous Rose from the AMG movie.

That's about all the news that is news over here. Hopefully I'll be able to update my journal more often, but it all depends on how depleted work leaves me, particularly since I heard through the grapevine that the girl who works nightshift opposite me turned in her two weeks' notice today. We'll see when I go to work tonight whether that's true or not and what that will mean for me and my weekly hours.

P.S.: Be it known all ye peoples that Dani is a spooty person for scaring the crap out of my while I was engaged in writing this entry with my headphones on so that I wouldn't disturb her slumber. So there. :þ

It's so nice to be running short-handed at work. With a few cooks quitting and a cashier getting fired recently, I've been called into work quite a bit, exceeding my scheduled 32 hours/week and often going over the 40 hour mark. Amazingly, I get paid overtime when I get called in excessively.

This week I was called in to work 2nd shift on Tuesday, putting me right around 40 hours. Last night I was asked to come in 2 hours early. Tonight I've been asked to come in on one of my usual days off...Christmas day. That's holiday pay, friends and neighbors. Double time. Oh, but wait! I'm already going to be in overtime on this pay period when I come in for my 8 hours tonight. Overtime + holiday pay = teh win. For 10 hours of holiday pay, all in the overtime bracket, I'll be earning something like 21.00 per hour.

Yes, despite having to work my ass off at all hours of the day and night and getting very little in the way of R&R time, I'm going to have a solid pay check to work with and make all this crap worthwhile. It's not like they really have anyone else reliable and competent they can call in to work at any time, with little to no advance notice.

Oh, well. My gain, I suppose. For now, though, I need sleep. I have a trans-shift tonight spanning 8pm until 4am (tail end of 2nd and a bit over half of 3rd.)

Unexpected package in the mail from the inestimable Ken-san really made my WinSol a good one. Much obliged to you, good sir! (Dani and I are still arguing whether you have amazingly perfect handwriting or whether you have a font that looks like that.)

Things have been busy since my last LJ update, made aaaaall the way back when I was having my first third shift at work. On the one hand, it's nice to say that I've settled into my job and do it very well. The management already thinks I'm more experienced and skilled at what I do than people who've been there much longer than I have...which is why they don't hesitate to call me in on my days off. WinSol was the first Wednesday I've been allowed to keep as a day off in several weeks.

I've been called at 8:50pm telling me they need me in at 10:00pm. I've been asked to venture in through blowing snow and ice on roads that had not been touched by DOT plow truck at 2am so finish off the other night shift girl's shift for her. Perhaps the most fun of all is coming home close to 7am (I'm supposed to be off-shift at 6) and get a call around 9:45am that they would like me to cover 2nd shift that afternoon from 2-10. Last week I got called in so often that the manager, Mary, was kidding around with me saying that the person from the next shift just called her and they need me to stay for a double. (I got her back later in the shift saying that while she was outside, we got a call from the morning girl and she couldn't come in, so I'd just work 1st shift, too.)

I've had overtime hours twice now, working on a third week of overtime right now. Most surprisingly, though, is that I actually get PAID for those overtime hours at overtime pay scale. AND they don't even try to weasel out of some overtime pay by trying to pay me my base wage instead of my third shift wage where the OT hours were incurred. Granted, there's only a dollar difference between my base and my overnight pay, but the point remains.

It's also been a good month by most standards in that, because I have a job, I am actually able to give presents to my beloved for Decemberween and our anniversary. That really feels good.

So, in synopsis for December 2005, I have a job, I survived in this insane world for a full quarter century, and I've managed to hang onto Dani for five years without her deciding to toss me off a bridge into a frozen river. Lord Goddess, what a year it's been...but that's a retrospective for another post. (:

I feel like a freshly peeled grape. In the interests of NOT looking like a scruffy-looking nerf herder, I shaved off my beard. Haven't done that in a LONG time. It's strange when I look into the mirror now. Of course, now I'm going to catch cold in my face and die and it'll just be awful, but that's life...err, death. Whatever. ^_^

First "real" night of work tonight, 10-6. Should be interesting. Still working on shifting my sleep cycle from night to day. It's going to take some time to get used to.

I want my PET to arrive in the mail soon. Like yesterday soon. Gimme! >.<

P.S.: People who make AMVs that use nifty music but then don't CITE the NAME nor the ARTIST of said music, either in the AMV itself or on its download page, need to be beaten severely. Oh, well. At least I can audio-rip the AMV and have the song thusly. I'd still like to find lyrics, though.

P.P.S.: I wish LJ would let me do my own icon set without having a paid account if I host the images myself. I've got a lovely spread of pictures that would make nifty mood icons, but I don't want to spend money on my LJ. Ah, well.

Well, just finished up my second day pulling cashier. My knees hurt a bit, but otherwise not bad. I'm getting the hang of things rather well, and all I need to do is pick up the pace a bit, but that'll come with experience. Trained to deal with the TRENDAR diesel computer today, as well as the CAT scale, and I did one check cashing. Pretty straight-forward for the most part. So, all in all doing good there so far.

In other news, while I was at work, I seem to have managed to win the auction for the Rockman Stream PET with chips on eBay. Granted, it's a Rockman PET, not a Blues, but it's a start and I'm thrilled to have been able to get my hands on one. Very much nifty. (Now I'll have to see about finding a Blues one sometime, a few plus parts, and maybe a few specific chips. We'll see.)

Recalled to life.

4 days/week, 10p-6a, Mon, Thu, Fri, & Sat @ 6.0/hr

.50 raise in 1-2 months for performance

training tomorrow from 3p-8p and again on Friday from 3p-9p

possibility of additional training on Sat/Sun

normal schedule starts Monday

｢game on｣

Lord Goddess, I'm tired. On Friday Dani had a horrendous back spasm that lasted for over an hour. She says that it might have been one of the worst she's ever gone through. Mercifully, she was able to get the night off from work so she could stay home and recouperate. Obviously, I didn't sleep well that night because I was constantly worrying about her.

On Saturday she was doing a wee bit better, but still pretty bad in the overall scheme of things. This time, however, they wouldn't let her off work. So, rather than let her hurt herself trying to get stuff done there, I went to work with her to do all the physical stuff. Sleep was minimal prior to departure.

Yesterday she was doing better, but I still didn't want her pushing it, so I went to work with her again, hoping to nudge her into her two days off so she could completely finish recovering from the spasm. Wasn't a whole lot to do last night, but I'm still operating on a small amount of very poor sleep. I should probably be sleeping now, except that my body seems bound and determined to keep my sleep cycle normalized (since it took so freaking long to balance it out.)

Tonight you'd better believe I'm taking my trazedone and telling the world to bugger off for 8-10 hours or however long my meds will keep me under.

Still, I *really* hope these two days off lets Dani get the rest and recovery that she needs. It was horrible having to sit there watching her be in great pain while I couldn't do anything about it. I'd rather not have that happen again any time soon.

I really should have posted this yesterday but I got, um...busy. Somehow.

Package from Ken-san in the mail. Momentary dismay that my computer's DVD-ROM drive is too old to read the burned DVDs. Later rejoicing when found that, after installation of XVID codec, Dani's computer could read and play the discs just fine.

Many large thanks, Ken-san! You the man!